Householder Cyril Mayers, 40, added: “What the hell has sexual orientation or religion got to do with wheelie bins? Mind your own business.”

Birmingham city council claimed it was a standard monitoring question.

A spokesman said: “Although we do ask those questions, as part of the effort to make the feedback as informed as possible, you will have also noticed that ‘prefer not to say’ is an option to every question in that part of the survey.”

It is not the first time the blundering council has been a laughing stock.

Last summer it commissioned a statue of Usain Bolt doing his victory pose – but got it the wrong way around.

In 2008 it used a picture of Birmingham, Alabama, on 360,000 leaflets and in 2010 it misspelt Birmingham on polling cards.